


Where Your Heart Is

by cascades (heartroots)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartroots/pseuds/cascades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds home at Hogwarts, but not where he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Your Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> "If home is where your heart is, then your real home's in your chest."

Hogwarts has never been home to Dean. The sight of its high walls and turrets and towers on the horizon doesn’t set his heart aflutter the same way that the little house at the end of the gravel road he returns to every summer does. _That’s_ coming home.

That is not to say that Dean doesn’t love Hogwarts. He loves arriving at King’s Cross Station with an array of suitcases full of items that would probably get him committed if he tried to explain their presence, loves passing through the barrier into a world he never knew he could feel he belonged to, loves the Hogwarts Express and the long journey back to what he used to think of as his second life. His start of term nerves always fade with familiar faces saying hello, asking how his summer’s been – reminding him in a rush of memories why the hassle and the hiding are worth it. 

The trolley always puts him at ease when it trundles past his compartment. The memory of the first taste of candy more magical than Willy Wonka could have ever made in his factory warms Dean’s heart like – well, like chocolate. Wizards know how useful it really is. Dean used to read that book over and over when he was young; getting his letter from Hogwarts was sort of like finding a golden ticket would have felt, Dean’s always thought. He doesn’t eat as many sweets as he used to, but the memory is enough to do the trick. Instead of a little chocolate bird flapping its tiny wings and peeping up at him from the remnants of a shattered candy egg, Dean had had a chocolate amphibian nearly slipping out of his hands, on its way to escaping out into the aisle until a small boy with freckles yelled at him to eat its bloody legs off, quick, before it gets away. Dean smiles every time he sees chocolate frogs in a shop window. Charlie Bucket, eat your heart out. 

Hogwarts is the most amazing place Dean’s ever been. Hogwarts, with its spectacular feasts that are newly spectacular at the start of each term after a summer of eating commonplace spreads; Hogwarts, with a lake and a forest full of strange creatures Dean never believed in, and a castle more home to ghosts than it is to some of the people who walk its halls every day; Hogwarts, with its eerie stone passageways and troublesome staircases and tricky doors and gossiping portraits and alive _everything_ that should by every law of Dean’s world be inanimate. Hogwarts is a place Dean loves being, but it is not home. The common room is quite a bit closer to the right feeling, and his dormitory even closer still, but the part of Hogwarts that feels most like home to Dean is the grounds: the sprawling hills and the sun-dappled edges of the forest and the shores of the lake. 

It’s best in warm weather. Dean hates being cold, and while the trees shimmering with ice and the snow sparkling under a pale winter sun is a beautiful sight, he can’t stand the chill in his lungs or the nip to his nose and cheeks. When the leaves are the warm tones of Gryffindor, and months later when the first day of spring that’s warm enough to feel like summer arrives, Dean spends every free moment outside of Hogwarts. 

The sunlight on the calm waters of the lake; the breezes that bring the sort of air from the surrounding trees, rustling softly and brimming with birdsong, that make him take each breath in slowly, as if he’ll never again fill his lungs with something so pleasant; the sky so many unnamed shades of blue; the grass so soft that Dean sometimes doesn’t wear socks to class so he can slip right out of his shoes and feel the blades beneath his feet, his eyes drawn to the earthy contrast of brown skin against green that he misses when the seasons change – that’s what magic feels like to Dean. Like a summer’s day in the countryside outside London at his grandparents’ house. Like home. That’s what he thought magic was, or at least the closest he’d ever come to it outside of a daydream, before the day he got his wand.

\---

When Seamus came to visit for two weeks the summer after fourth year, they spent every day the rain didn’t get in their way outside. (On those days, they sat on the couch in the living room and played Exploding Snap under the wide eyes of his little sister who still can’t grasp the fact that it’s not just _like_ magic, it _is_ , and afterwards escaped from his grandmother’s endless questions about Hogwarts and up into Dean’s room to talk and stare at the water streaming in rivulets down the windowpane, until they got hungry again and his mum cursed their teenage boy appetites.) Seamus burned, then freckled, and the soles of Dean’s feet stayed black from going barefoot everywhere no matter how often he scrubbed them.

Seamus had never experienced the country quite like that, having grown up in the midst of a small town. Dean liked living in London well enough, plenty of things to do and an atmosphere that no other city he’d visited could quite match, but the big old farmhouse on the hillside that his mum takes them all to stay at for couple months every summer with her parents is where his heart truly lies. Fields and forests and little rivers were only on the far fringes of Seamus’ home; Dean has lived in them, and that summer he taught Seamus how to as well. 

Sometimes when they sit together on the shores of the lake after class, catching their breath before the bustle of the Great Hall at mealtime, he can see Seamus remember when he shuts his eyes and breathes deep and wiggles his feet, like shoes don’t feel right. Dean remembers jumping in ponds when the noontime sun was blazing and walking through the forest to find berry patches and sneaking off to start a fire in the middle of a field under the moon when everyone else was asleep, lying under more stars than it seemed the sky could hold and hearing crickets, always somewhere out of sight, sounding off the chill of the night (Dean had pulled his jumper tighter around his shoulders and moved closer to Seamus – a rare moment when he wished he wasn’t barefoot) over the soft murmurs of their conversation. 

“Best summer I’ve ever had, mate,” Seamus told him when they dropped him off at his mother’s house. Seamus slept on his shoulder most of the way there, though it wasn’t really that long a drive; Dean will never understand how he can fall asleep so quickly, anywhere. 

Dean smiled and hugged him tighter. “Me too. Come and stay again sometime.”

“’Course I will. Your mum’s heart would break if I didn’t, right Mum?” Seamus hollered the last bit at Dean’s mother, who was sitting in the car waiting. She gave them a solemn nod through the window. Seamus grinned and blew her a kiss and Dean laughed. Dean knew she’d love Seamus. Who wouldn’t love Seamus? 

“C’mon Dean, say goodbye to your cheeky little friend,” his mother said kindly, her fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel, “We’ve got to get back to London today and start your shopping. You’ll be seeing him at school in a week, if you can believe it.” 

“Oh god, she’s right. Fifth year. OWLs. Kill me now, Dean.”

Dean had assured him that fifth year couldn’t be _that_ bad, but it had been bad. OWLs had nothing to do with it. The worst part, even worse than being torn between loyalty to Seamus and what he knew was right, even worse than Umbridge and the DA being discovered, was the summer after when Seamus didn’t come to visit. Dean hoped for rain every day so he could lie up in his bed and stare at the letter from Seamus saying his mam wouldn’t let him come, that she was scared and he was sorry, but the sun came out day after day like some great big joke. Dean set himself to weeding and mowing and chopping wood so he’d have nothing else to think about but the ache in his muscles and the sweat on his back and the gnawing hunger in his stomach after a long day’s work.

\---

“We’re best mates, right?”

Dean hadn’t been sure until Seamus said it. It was in third year, after Care of Magical Creatures when they were sitting on opposite sides of a young tree in the courtyard. 

“Yes,” Dean had readily answered, as if he hadn’t just realized that. He perused his monstrous text book with what he hoped was a casual air. He did a surprisingly good job of hiding the fact that he was trembling with happiness. He had hoped, but he hadn’t known. He’d never been anyone’s best mate before. Friends from his childhood had always found someone louder, rowdier, more interesting. Dean had hoped, but he’d never believed he’d find someone like Seamus to be his. 

The magic of Hogwarts isn’t all wand-waving and enchantments; it’s the people too. It’s friends like Seamus. 

“Right, so as my best mate,” Seamus said, scooting closer to him under the tree, “if I tell you something, you’re sworn by the code of best mates not to tell anyone else.” 

“You know I’d never tell anyone, Seamus, code or no.” 

Seamus smiled gratefully, but it was nervous around the edges. Dean watched him pluck blades of grass and then rip them and wring them in his hands until they were small and twisted like Parvati’s braids. “So. I sort of… like someone. That I probably – well, definitely, if my mam had anything to say about it, shouldn’t.” 

Dean’s heart did a strange little tripping, twisting sort of thing that Dean has always distinctly remembered, but has yet to understand. “Who’s that?” 

“Promise you’ll still be my best mate no matter what I say.” 

“Seamus, don’t be stupid. Of course I’ll still be your best mate.” It felt wonderful to say, and a smile tugged at the corners of Dean’s mouth even as he tried to stay serious for that serious moment. 

Seamus blew out a heavy breath and dropped the grass he was fiddling with; he was so tense Dean could feel it without touching him. “I don’t know if it – it’s not really serious or anything, not like some sort of big feeling, but I sort of like…” Seamus swallowed, not meeting Dean’s eyes; Dean stared at the freckles on his deeply reddened cheek instead. “Oliver Wood.” 

“’S that all?” Dean asked after a heavy beat of silence. 

Seamus whipped his head around so fast Dean’s neck ached for him. His cheeks were even redder than before. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘s that all? Oliver Wood isn’t a _girl_ , in case you haven’t noticed. I might be… I think I might be _gay_ , and you say is that bloody all?” 

Dean couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought you were going to say you liked –” _me_ , “– Professor McGonagall or Filch or something, the way you were carrying on.” 

Seamus made a face. “That’s bloody disgusting. I’m a possible pouf, not a total pervert. But it’s still a big deal!” He flailed his arms about, trying to impress the severe importance of his crush on Oliver Wood upon the still giggling Dean. Eventually he gave up and slumped against the tree, punched Dean in the shoulder and told him to piss off if he wasn’t going to be as upset as Seamus about his crisis. Dean had learned not to take his little flare-ups of temper too seriously. They were common, and easily calmed with measured words and gentle touches. 

Dean chuckled and put an arm around Seamus. Seamus was so good at sulking. “Would it make you feel better if I said I think Oliver Wood’s a damn good-looking bloke?” 

Seamus brightened immediately. “You do?”

Dean nodded. “Even though he hasn’t got eyes for anything that’s not on a broomstick.” 

“That’s why I tried out for the team,” Seamus mumbled. “Harry’s probably got a better chance than anyone, youngest seeker in a century and all.”

“Too bad Harry doesn’t have eyes for anything that’s not trying to kill him.” 

“Harry has said Wood’s trying to kill him with practices at the break of dawn. Guess they’ll be very happy together,” Seamus said with a lop-sided grin. Dean laughed again and squeezed Seamus’s shoulder when he started to look down. “You really won’t tell anyone, right?”

“Never,” Dean promised. “And look, just because you like one bloke doesn’t mean you’re gay. It’s not a bad thing anyway. But you could just be… real open-minded, or something. Don’t fret too much about it. You’ve liked plenty of girls before.” 

Seamus smiled, a bit woodenly, with his green eyes fixed on the ground. “Yeah Thanks, Dean.”

\---

Dean stayed with Seamus for a week the summer after third year.

“Dean’s my best mate from Hogwarts,” Seamus had told his mother, and Dean nodded politely and tried not to smile so wide his face burst open. 

Seamus’ house was loud; his mother loudly despairing for the chores that weren’t done yet, his sisters loudly giggling whenever Dean walked by, Seamus loudly complaining that he never got any damn privacy, and when the bathroom door is closed you bloody well _knock_. It wasn’t the sort of loud that made Dean feel uncomfortable, like when your friend’s parents yell at your friend in front of you and you stand awkwardly to the side and wonder whether it’d be better for you to defend your friend or to agree with the scolding, but eventually land on doing nothing at all. It was like the Finnigans didn’t realize they were louder than any other family, or they did and they didn’t feel the need to change their habits around Dean, and that was nice. Dean felt welcome, if a little out of place. 

“Do they – your family, I mean, think it’s weird that I’m so…”

Seamus looked up at Dean, spread out on Seamus’ bed playing Solitaire, from the floor where he was sorting his socks. Seamus’ bedroom was quiet, but downstairs people were yelling and pots were banging and the radio was blaring a song Dean had never heard. “What?” Seamus asked. 

Dean shrugged. “Quiet.”

Seamus laughed. “Yeah, we’re sort a noisy bunch, aren’t we? I don’t think they notice, honestly. ” 

Dean let a few seconds pass before he said, “Do you think it’s weird?”

Seamus smiled without glancing up. “Nah, mate. I like it. You’re a welcome change from those loons. And we balance each out, don’t we?” 

“I suppose,” Dean said quietly, and smiled at the Jack of Hearts – just the red card he needed. 

“Wanna play War?”

“Sure.” Dean made room for Seamus on the bed, but only enough room that they still had to touch when Seamus plopped down beside him and stole a pillow. 

Seamus’ mother’s lips were thin for hours after the morning when she came in to wake Seamus up so they could go school shopping and found him entwined with Dean on the bed, fast asleep on Dean’s chest. Dean supposed it looked sort of bad, him shirtless and Seamus in his underwear, but that’s the way they both liked to sleep, and they’d fallen asleep together. Dean wondered if she’d found out about Seamus’ crush on Oliver Wood somehow. 

“D’you still like Oliver?” Dean asked one night, when he and Dean were eating cookies they’d snuck from the kitchen and it was late enough that the whole Finnigan household was silent; it was a rare thing. Dean was feeling less welcome there by the day, as Seamus’ mother got quieter and quieter. 

Seamus stiffened. He licked his lips nervously and shook his head _no_. “I’m over that.” 

“Oh. That’s good?”

“I s’pose. Why, did it bother you?” 

Dean frowned. “You know it didn’t.”

Seamus rested his head on his knees and stared out the open window, at darkness.“Just making sure.”

Dean couldn’t place the emotion in his eyes when Seamus finally looked at him. It was only a split-second, a glance intense with a feeling of something – something Dean hadn’t seen in Seamus’ eyes before, and it startled him and made his stomach twist. His small body was curled in on itself, like a crumpled origami figure, and everything in his face but his eyes was blank, unreadable. 

At the start of sixth term, he recognized that as the first time Seamus had closed himself off to Dean. His eyes in that moment still appear in Dean’s dreams, his subconscious taunting him with the fact that there is something he doesn’t know about Seamus. Something Seamus has been hiding from him since they were thirteen. 

Dean’s never had the courage to just ask what. Neville often wonders why he was put in Gryffindor, but Dean knows Neville is brave in ways no one else has noticed yet; he has a harder time understanding why he was chosen for Gryffindor. Maybe he just didn’t fit anywhere else.

\---

“Seamus has been acting sort of odd, hasn’t he?” Neville said one morning when he and Dean were the only ones left in the dormitory. Seamus has snuck out early, as he’d taken to doing, and Harry mentioned something about needing to find someone and Ron chased after him like it was second year again and Harry was going on about murderous voices in the pipes. He’d been right about that one, though.

“Yeah, he has,” Dean automatically agreed. It had only been three months, yet he and Seamus had grown apart somehow. Dean knew it had something to do with Seamus not staying with him over the summer, but it couldn’t be just that. If a friendship could be ruined with a summer apart, he’d have no friends left at Hogwarts.

“Is he okay?” 

“Not sure. He and I haven’t talked much.” Dean clenched his fists. The sadness was evident in his voice. 

“Did you two have a row or something?” Neville asked, deep concern just as evident in his. “That’s not like you to let it go this far.” 

Dean stared at Seamus’ empty bed, shoulders hunched and throat tight. “I don’t know what happened.”

\---

They’ve been like that since, Seamus uncharacteristically quiet and Dean too afraid to shake him by the shoulders and ask him what the fuck is wrong. Dean spends a lot of time dwelling on memories as he stares at the back of Seamus’ head from across the room in class, or in the Great Hall, or when he’s lying in bed at night not saying a word to anyone; he never sits beside Dean like he used to.

Everything about Hogwarts feels alien to Dean. Sixth year has been bad enough with the heaviest workload he’s ever had and the threat of the war constantly hanging over his head, and of course Seamus had to go and add this to it. Maybe he’d feel less like he was drowning if he had Seamus, his best mate, laughing with him same as always. 

He’s outside one day after Transfiguration, and the lake is frozen out a few feet from the shore and the trees are frozen and the ground is frozen, crunching beneath his shoes, and even the air is frozen still –Dean has never felt less welcome on the Hogwarts grounds. He’s always hated being outside in the cold, but he didn’t mind it so much when Seamus was with him, his shoulder warm against Dean’s all the way back up to the common room. After the first snow in fourth year, Seamus charmed some snowballs to stay frozen under his cloak and fired on unsuspecting Gryffindor classmates with no hope of retaliation while Dean warmed his hands by the fire and smiled to himself. George said they were proud to call Seamus a fellow Gryffindor as he melted snow from Fred’s hair, and Seamus laughed and laughed, even as Lavender charmed the water she was drinking into snow and hit him in the face with it. 

He hears footsteps behind him and hopes with all his heart it’s finally Seamus come to explain, and then come to put snow down his shirt and laugh and laugh as Dean chases him around the courtyard, but he turns and it’s Ginny. His heart sinks. 

“Are you all right?” she asks. “You looked really down at supper.” 

Dean feels guilty for being so disappointed to see her. She is his friend, after all. He crosses his arms tight over his chest and breathes frost, like he’s as frozen as the world around him. “No. I miss Seamus.” 

“Have you tried asking him why he’s avoiding you?” She says it like it’s so simple, like it might not change everything. At least he can pretend they still have a chance of being friends if he doesn’t confront it. Dean is a coward who’d rather stay in purgatory than find out his fate is a bad one. “Seamus isn’t cruel. He’d only do this if he had some stupid reason in his head of why it was right. You have to go make him realize it’s _stupid_ and not worth your friendship.” 

Dean sighs and stares out at the lake. Ginny’s right. Nearly six months without Seamus, four of them when he was still physically within reach, sleeping and waking in the same room as Dean every day without a word of familiarity passing between them, is more than he can stand.

\---

Dean corners Seamus on the Hogwarts Express when it’s taking them home for Christmas.

“I need to talk to you,” Dean says firmly. His voice has never sounded so severe when addressing Seamus before. 

“Thought you might,” Seamus sighs, and follows Dean into an empty compartment. He sits across from Dean with his hands clasped in his lap, staring out the window as the fields of snow start to whip by. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but I figured you already knew. Things were already… awkward enough as it was. This is just how it has to be, I guess,” he says quietly, as if that makes any sense at all.

“What the fuck are you on about?” Dean snaps. His patience is so thin it can’t be seen with the naked eye. “Why’ve you been avoiding me?” 

Seamus looks up slowly. “You don’t… you mean no one told you?” 

“Told me _what_?” 

Seamus fidgets, almost violently. “My mam, she… she figured out that I – well, you know, with Oliver Wood and all, and I figured if she, daft as she can be, knew that then everyone… everyone had to realize that I…”

“That you like blokes? You’ve been avoiding me because of something I already bloody know?” Dean feels like punching him in the face, and Dean isn’t easily angered. Behind the anger there is sympathy for the hell Seamus must have gone through with his mother, but he can’t very well dwell on that when Seamus has put him through worse. How many times does he have to assure Seamus that he doesn’t care before the idiot will believe it? What could Seamus possibly think of him, if this is the reason he hasn’t looked him in the eye since term started? 

“No. Not just… blokes in general.” Seamus swallows and looks down at his lap. “You.”

Dean can’t have understood that correctly. “Me. Me what?” 

Seamus scrubs a hand through his hair and looks at Dean like his world is crumbling around him. He has that emotion in his eyes again, from when they were thirteen and things seemed so simple, but Seamus’s mam looked at Dean like she’d never forgive him for something; Dean understands before Seamus says it. “I like you, Dean. Sorta love you, actually.” 

“Oh.” 

Seamus smiles sadly at him as the trolley trundles by. Dean feels a warmth spreading through him that he hasn’t felt in so long. It feels like home. Dean hasn’t felt like this since he said goodbye to Seamus on the train at the end of fifth year, and that’s when it hits him: Seamus is what makes Hogwarts feel like home. Seamus in the common room cursing when Ron pummels him, quite literally, at wizard’s chess; Seamus sitting with him beside the fire and copying off his homework under the disapproving stare of Hermione; Seamus whispering in his ear, trying to make him laugh in class; Seamus on the shores of the lake on first warm day of spring gathering more freckles across his nose, head tossed back in the sunlight and each and every breath filling his lungs slowly, like it’s the first or the last breaths he’ll ever take; Seamus sleeping with his bed curtains open, with his face buried in the pillow as the morning light from the window hits the curve of his shoulder, and Dean knows, in the same way he always knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he loved Seamus, that he could draw every freckle on that patch of skin without looking – that he never wants to wake up without that being the first thing he sees. 

“Ginny’s right, you are stupid,” Dean says when he realizes Seamus is apologizing like Dean hates him for this, and he tugs Seamus forward and kisses him before there can be any more misunderstandings. 

“Ginny said I’m stupid?” Seamus asks like the idiot he is, breathless because their mouths are sliding open and sloppy together, and Dean has a hand curled around the back of his neck and Seamus is in his lap, moving his hips against Dean’s and Dean realizes, a small realization compared to the last, that he’s wanted Seamus to do that since they danced together at the Yule Ball. Nothing, not returning to Hogwarts or his mum’s flat in London or his grandparents’ house up on the hill, has ever opened up his heart and filled it up with a happiness like this, like his first taste of magical chocolate handed to him by a boy named Seamus, like the first time he saw Seamus’ freckled face and every time since, like the first time Seamus said they were best mates and Dean was extraordinarily happy for no reason at all. 

“Not in so many words, but you _are_ stupid. You’re really fucking stupid,” Dean growls as he kisses his way down Seamus’ neck, moves his loose jumper aside to mouth at Dean’s favorite patch of freckles on his shoulder and marvels at the way his whole body thrums with pleasure at the soft sounds Seamus is sighing into his ear; curses and pleas and Dean’s name, over and over. Magic is a summer’s day, and finding home in his best mate’s arms. “‘Course I love you, Seamus.”


End file.
